3rd Degree the Podcast #310

[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, here we go. Yeah. [00:00:11] Speaker B: Third Degree, the Third Degree Ned Podcast. [00:00:15] Speaker A: Third Degree the Third Degree Ned Podcast. Third Degree the Third Degree Nap Podcast. Third Degree the Third Degree Nap Podcast. [00:00:27] Speaker C: Third Degree. The podcast is brought to you by listeners like you. If you've enjoyed any of our coverage of FC Dallas over the years on this podcast or on the website, why not give us a little [email protected] third degree. But now, as the market's expanding and all these new soccer teams are coming in, we're expanding our coverage, trying to give all of them the due justice they deserve. Come on in and join us. Join us on the Discord. Join us on Patreon. Join us@third degree.net and on third degree, the podcast for all the soccer coverage in the Metroplex. [00:00:56] Speaker A: Well, hello there, DFW soccer loving person. You welcome to another episode of Third Degree, the podcast. Do we like that one better? I don't know. [00:01:07] Speaker B: I don't know. They're not curious enough. Damn. [00:01:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Do I need to include the word curious? Does that need to stay? Is that. See, I think FC Dallas curious. I don't know. We'll think about it more anyway. Hello, everybody. We're back. There he is, Dan Crook. Howdy, Dan. [00:01:24] Speaker B: Hello. [00:01:25] Speaker A: Buzz Carrick, your hero, my hero, everybody's Hero, Editor, Founder, third degree.net and the original soccer influence. Howdy, Buzz. [00:01:33] Speaker C: Hey, fellas. How is everybody this wonderful Monday evening? [00:01:38] Speaker A: Pretty great. We got some more rain today and I love it. [00:01:40] Speaker C: I've been enjoying the temperature for sure. Open all day. [00:01:43] Speaker A: Yes. I got lucky. My. My condenser fan outside busted on Thursday and they had to order the part so I didn't have air conditioning downstairs all weekend. [00:01:54] Speaker C: Perfect timing. [00:01:55] Speaker A: Didn't need it. Yeah, knock on wood. I got lucky there. Got lucky. We got lots to talk about today. We'll obviously get into Dallas Trinity and their game this week, North Texas Texoma. The big Atletico Dallas brand reveal is also on the slate for discussion today. But I'm sorry, Dan. I'm sorry, Buzz, but we have to get into it. When was the last time FC Dallas lost a game by five goals as they go to San Diego, play an expansion team and lose Cinco to zero? [00:02:38] Speaker C: That's a good question. I don't know the answer. I feel like there was a 6:1 or something game a couple years ago. I don't remember for sure. Did you look it up? Do you have the answer for us? [00:02:48] Speaker A: No, I don't. I should have. I was just thinking about it as that. As that was all those Words. When I saw the score on the run sheet, I thought, wait, you know what? I don't even know the last time Dallas lost the game by five goals. [00:02:59] Speaker C: Somebody added me on Twitter and said that they were bummed out because they had invited some friends of theirs to come, like, to a place to watch the game and have a couple beers. And they were like, well, wow, your team sucks. And I was like. I said, it reminds me like one of my good friends in this world, in this life. I finally talked him into going to a game, and it was the 81 LA Galaxy game. It was the first ever soccer game he been to. Is it always like this? And I was like, no, it's like. It's funny album that happens, people. Yeah. [00:03:29] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, man. It was a disaster. And we'll talk about the game. And obviously, the, The. [00:03:37] Speaker C: The. [00:03:37] Speaker A: The big news of the game buzz is that Eric Quill decided to move to this 3, 4, 3 formation. And I could just see Nico Estevez somewhere in his car punching his dashboard in fury, like, wait a second. [00:03:51] Speaker C: I know. What are you doing? [00:03:53] Speaker A: That's my formation. [00:03:54] Speaker C: Well, the game before we talked about, like, well, that worked really well. We should see that some more. I couldn't quite bring myself to predict that he would actually do it, like, the next game. I. I thought, kind of thought kind of meant, like, blatant games, maybe is an alternative. But sure enough, you know, I mean, I did, I did offer a version of that. And for people that when I was. When I was doing my preview, not as the first choice, but, like, there's a small chance this could happen. And sure enough, that is what happened. And it was a disaster. I'm most disappointed, I think, in the lack of reaction that it's not working, because you could have. With the personnel on the field, you could have switched it back to a back four easily enough. Somebody would have been slightly out of position, but you could have done it. You know, you would end up with like an Abubakar left back or something, or. Or your G day at left back. But what happened is basically, you know, up until the pk, Dallas played fair, okay? They were really releasing the wing backs high. And as we talked about last year a lot when you're playing wing back, especially in this 3, 4, 3, you have to be able to get up and get all the way back because. And the. And all the way back wasn't happening. And because San Diego played with two wings that really pulled the three center box way apart, and it made a humongous gaps between the IR and Iaga and Iaga and Abubakar, and then on every single goal, pretty much all but one Iaga, you know, chases this, the striker way out of the middle and is now like 10 to 15 yards out of position. And then the wings or a midfielder crashes out of the midfield right through that gigantic ocean wide gap that now is in the middle of the back line and just shreds Dallas at will. And doesn't help that the six in front of these guys is basically standing with cement shoes on and gets run past with ease. So that was an utter disaster. And the one goal that wasn't exactly like that was similar enough that when the striker didn't run away, he was right where in the middle, in an ordinarily spot. Iaga was just so slow, the guy just pivoted him into the ground and Iaga was like, what? And the guy was gone. But it was the same thing. There was a gigantic bet gap and. And no solution was brought either by the players on the field or the coach at halftime or via substitutions to narrow that gap. And if you've listened to this podcast enough, one of the reasons people sometimes play three at the back is that when the wing backs come back, it compresses the back line and reduces the space between the back three center backs. And they didn't do that at all. And there was no recognition, no adaptation, and no recovery. And it just was awful the whole game. So it was a disaster in every way you could imagine. [00:06:33] Speaker A: Yeah, Dan, you didn't see the game you were telling us before we started. So I'm just going to say you're a lucky bastard that you didn't see it, because it was, it was weird. Now, the weird part about this buzz is that in my notes at the 10 minute mark, I ironically have written the following. The new formation is clearly helping Dallas because up until the first San Diego goal, which was the penalty kick, Dallas was pressing well. San Diego was very frustrated, couldn't get out of their own half. And it was a. I thought it was actually working and you could actually read the team and what they were trying to do both with and without the ball, which was the first time time I felt like that all season long. And then of course, the PK comes and then the wheels start flying off from there. And I think Mike Ivaras, and credit to him, he figured out what was going on, made a slight tactical adjustment and corrected everything. Because once the PK happened and they were down one nothing, it was, you know, no holds Barred from there. [00:07:42] Speaker C: Well, Dallas will feel a little bit aggrieved about that pk. You know, it's pretty. I'm not gonna go call it controversial, but there's a little bit, like, really, you know, but, you know, the ref called. Navarro agreed. So whatever. [00:07:54] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That's a PK that he. He could have not called. [00:07:58] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:07:58] Speaker A: And San Diego's fans would be freaking out, and Var would have looked at it and go, no. [00:08:02] Speaker C: Right. [00:08:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:03] Speaker A: It was completely a subjective decision by the referee, and there was no clear and obvious error one way. [00:08:08] Speaker C: Well, that. That gave San Diego a lot of confidence. I was with you. I, like. I actually tweeted, like, before the goal, too, that, like, I really liked how high the wing backs were getting, and that's what was helping overload the front ends. And it was. Jack Moore was more involved with buildup play up the right side than we've seen all year, probably because he had a center back there next to him passing in the ball. You know, that side looked better. There was more balance. Moore was getting vertical on the other side. Anderson, Julio was getting vertical. All that was great. But then nobody got back. And after the pk, San Diego opens the field up. Still nobody got back, and it just stayed open. It was just a cavernous situation for San Diego, who's a great transition team, to just run through when check. Lozano had just a stellar, incredible performance and was the league player of the match day. You know, quite rightly so. There were parts of it. There were parts of it that brought, like, listen, we know that Quell wants to play 4231, and the. The part he wants from that formation is the verticality from the wings getting behind and running past Musa, or in this case, Ferrington and Acosta. This shape let him have that. But it sacrificed the defensive cohesion because those guys weren't capable of getting all the way back. [00:09:19] Speaker A: Well, after the pk, you know, San Diego gets their second goal in the 27th minute, which is exactly what you talked about. They just kind of pulled Dallas apart and got the back line exposed. [00:09:32] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:09:33] Speaker A: And it felt like in that moment that San Diego. San Diego was doing to Dallas what Dallas has been doing to other teams, which is just kind of sitting and waiting for their opportunity to go vertical. And. And it was weird to see the game play out this way. But here's the thing, Buzz, and this is really the conversation which is the thing that leads into last week, which is the Lucho Acosta problem, because the reason why he's trying the 3, 4, 3 is to solve this problem with Lucho Acosta. And I, I there were little bits and pieces before the penalty kick that I thought, ooh, there's something working here. But man, as on and as San Diego figured out Dallas and just began to cause Dallas to have to chase shadows with their amazing passing. I mean the intricate passing that team does in building out a pressure or just getting around Dallas was quite impressive for a brand new team with a first time head coach like that was really impressive. But this Lucho Acosta problem is very, very much a thing. And I have no idea how Eric Quill solves it. [00:10:41] Speaker C: Yeah, it's interesting to watch somebody Luchi ball and dismantle Dallas playing Luchi ball, which is exactly what they play. Maybe we'll call it Mikey Varis ball. Yeah, the, the Lucia Casa problem is real. It is magnified by Peter Musa being out. And I will show you what I mean by that. Dallas, in this game between players, you know, either being dispossessed or miscontrolling passes basically, or making bad passes, they were turned over 27 times. And the last three games, including the win at Miami 39 times and the tie at Minnesota 30 times. Like, since those are the top three turnover games of the season for Dallas. And that's because Peter Musa is not there. Because Peter Musa and Lucho Costa work together. Work together really well. They're on the same page. They know how to find each other. When this is. And this is not a shot at Logan Farrington. This is just a statement of he and Diego Costa are not dialed in and on the same page together for whatever reason. And it's. And it's ex. It's escalating because LUCHA Acosta had 63 touches in this game, which is the most for FC Dallas. And he had 53 pass attempts, again, the most for FC Dallas. So they're going through him. He's the fulcrum. And then he only passed at a clip of 64%, which is the lowest player on the team. Now if he was a, if he was the pure striker, if he was the nine or the wing, you might not care, but he's the fulcrum. He's getting the most touches and the most passing attempts and he's crapping out because he's not connecting and interlocking with the rest of the team in the front. This problem of figuring out how to use him still exists. Matt Doyle even said somebody had asked him what he thought about SC Dallas and he said the only Thing I can say is that Quill's clearly throwing stuff at a wall trying to figure out how to make Diego Casa work in this team. Massive problem. He's going to have to figure it out. It's going to be, it's a huge going forward to try and solve this problem. And if you don't solve this problem, the season is going to be pretty rough. [00:12:34] Speaker A: So, you know, we all by and large were super excited about Lucho Acosta coming to this club when they announced it because obviously they needed somebody to play that kind of attacking midfield position. But I kind of feel like we talked about this at the time, but we didn't want to be totally Debbie Downer about it. But there was also a part of us that wondered how this was going to work in an Eric Quill system. And this is kind of coming to fruition. [00:13:00] Speaker C: The trouble, the trouble is that the kind of player he is, which is this off striker, Jason Christ, Jason Jesus Ferreira kind of player. It's what he is. He's not a pure 10. He's not Amaro Diaz, he's not, he's not a, he's not even not an Oscar Perea for sure. You know, he's the kind of guy who doesn't put in the two way effort. So you can't really use him as the point guy in that 4231 that Quill wants to play. So you have a disconnect there between those two elements and he's, he's the, one of the most expensive players they have, one of the most important players they have. And right now the integration is not there. So like, you know, something's got to be sacrificed to make it work. You got to figure out how to be able to use him probably in some kind of two striker system. But yet when you do, when you do that, him and he and Musa are not vertical get behind you kind of players and Quill wants to play a vertical get behind you kind of game. [00:13:55] Speaker A: So yeah, when Lucho doesn't have Moose out there, he's essentially a wasted. I mean you might as well not even have him on the field. [00:14:04] Speaker C: Pretty much, yeah. [00:14:07] Speaker A: Dawned on me. I wonder. I'm a big, I'm a big fan of the fail fast theory, which is you try something, if it doesn't work quickly, you just bail out on it. Fail fast. Hey Dan, just to get you included in here, I'm going to ask you a hypothetical. If this kind of continues at this pace up until the summer window does would Dallas be Better off trading him to another MLS team who could use him for a cup run and trying to recoup some of that 5 million bucks and using that to do something else. [00:14:43] Speaker B: It wouldn't be a horrible idea. It's just how. How married to Lucho over Eric is Andres and. [00:14:57] Speaker A: Interesting. Yeah, I mean, it's a ridiculous. I mean, somebody's listening to this, yelling at me for even asking that question because obviously Peter Moussa could come back next week or in two weeks or whenever the ankle is going to let him come back and things could get a little bit better. But even when those two guys were playing really well together, I still don't think we ever really believe this team was playing well. They were getting some results over some other pretty bad teams. [00:15:26] Speaker C: Yeah, we talked about that a lot. Yeah, I think, I think the key is like, you know, it probably will feel like it's a ridiculous idea to try and move him on already. And they're certainly not, they're not going to want to admit, like, oh, we got that completely wrong. [00:15:39] Speaker A: Let me ask the question this way. So instead of doing something silly like trading him, what could they bring into the team and change about the, the tactics that would make it work? [00:15:50] Speaker C: Yeah, the, the trick is, is that I feel that you're cut with him. You're kind of limited into playing a two striker system, you know, a 10, nine striker system. There's only, there's only a couple of those that really can work now. It's not a very common thing to play two strikers anymore. Everything's about overloading and overlapping and flex. Flex playing flexible soccer. So, you know, you're really only stuck. You're stuck with like a 4, 42 kind of thing, you know, which is not really very common anymore just because it really limits your. The capability of the modern outside back who can get forward in such a good, positive way. And the other way is really to play basically like sort of like they did last night, but less a 3, 43 and more of a 3, 5 2. And the problem with both of those things is that the roster is not built for either one of those things. But then you and I and Dan have been talking about how the roster is sort of built not really for anything. It's really. It's built for flexibility. Right. To be able to do lots of things. Okay, well, that means if it really is built for flexibility, that means somewhere in there you, you need to be able to find the bodies in that system to play in a way that frees up your Best two players or, or more. And this comes back to the idea again, like if your DPS don't hit, if your U22 initiatives don't hit, if your TAM players aren't hitting, you're going to have a lot of problems in terms of winning games in this league. And last year it was because they were injured and they were gone. And this year it's because it's functioning, not working. Let's just say that like over the next course of the next month or two, you have two million dollar players coming off the injury list. Sebastian Legette and Paxton Palmicole. Right? If you can figure out those two million dollar players and Lucho Acosta and Peter Musa and Anderson Julio, if you can find a way, find the formation that will work with those guys. And right now I don't have the answer to this. And I'm gonna, I'm sure we'll all be thinking about it. I'm sure Quill will be trying to work towards it. [00:17:48] Speaker A: Now we're really kind of depending on you to figure it out, Buzz. [00:17:50] Speaker C: I mean, we'll get there eventually, but I mean we're depending on Eric to figure it out, not me. I mean, no one gives a crap what I think about it. It's the coach who's gonna have to solve it. The, the trick is that you're gonna go, okay, there is some talent here, but it being hurt or it not being used correctly or it being out of sorts are all just as bad. Like not hitting doesn't mean like they're not available. It means like they're not performing. So like if they can't get these DP level players to perform, it's going to be a really dark, tough year. So this is what, this is what Quill's getting paid for, right? He, Quill is not the go get players guy. He's the coach, the team to win games guy. Right? So like in, in the medium term of this season, the answer is not going to be go get four wing backs. This isn't Chelsea where I've got $20 million I can spend on per player and bring in like eight players in the next window. I have no idea if Chelsea can do that. You know what I'm saying? Like, this isn't a club where you can just go buy your way out of problems. So if, if you really want to go with wing backs and play some kind of three, five, two, you know who's going to be that 10? Maybe that could be packs, the real 10, maybe that could be Paxton, maybe. Paxley could be a real 10 and a 4, 2, 3, 1. But then what do you do with Lucho? Maybe he's a false swing. Like, they're going to have to play their way into a lot of these things to try and figure out how they could work. Like, you. You can write them down on paper and it might sound cool, but then you got to go do it on the field, you know, and that's harder. [00:19:09] Speaker A: So why do you believe Quill didn't make the change in this game? Because all of us were sitting at home going, okay, Eric, it's 2 0. It's halftime. Just make the obvious change. Why do you think he stuck with it for 90 minutes when it clearly was the. The big problem? Is he just trying to make a point? [00:19:29] Speaker C: No, no, I. Well, I suppose he could be. You know, maybe he felt like he wanted to let guys kind of, you know, fight in it. Maybe he really wanted to invest some time in this system and see if it, like, okay, it's not working. Maybe can we get it to work in this game? And maybe we just. The game's lost, so, like, we. By halftime, it's over, right? So maybe. Okay, let's work it. Let's see if it can actually be good for the last half or the last 30 minutes. I'll try some different guys and see if it can be good. I mean, you can look at, you know, once a game is thrown away, you know, you can. You can use it as a tool to try and figure out, like, is there anything here that can help me? You know, so that's. That's all I can come up with, is why he didn't try it. Because otherwise it would have been really easy to just, you know, Norris is on the bench, right? Sabin, Norris, go back four, take off one of those center backs. Simple, right? Or even just use the guys you have, like I said, and put a booba car left back or something. I don't know. It's not great, but it would at least be four cross. So my only assumption is that, you know, either it's a call to action of the guys of, like, you guys made this problem. Let's go figure it out. What can you play this way? Can you dig deep and find it? Or else he just wanted to test some things, I guess, because that. Otherwise I don't really have an answer. Because he didn't. The postgame press conference, he didn't really talk about that. He didn't talk about, like, why he didn't change it. He just talked about what went wrong, you know, and that how they're gonna have to try work and analyze and stuff. So I mean, I hope the answer isn't just like they didn't know what to do. That would be worrisome. [00:20:56] Speaker A: Well, you know, in your instant reactions video after the game, you were right. It was hard to pick anybody, even though you require yourself to do it as man of the match because everybody was really poor. And it was one of those games where the game just began to compound itself and you could kind of tell Dallas was just trying to. Was waiting for the 90th minute. But man, it's so weird to me that we have been spending time this season kind of singing the praises of Ibiaga and how much playing next side alongside Urge has improved his game. But oh man, this was old school. Please get him off the field, Iaga tonight or that night. And I, and again, I think it's, it, it's largely because of the system. I. And that, that clearly is not a system that works for him because there were so many flashbacks to last season when they were playing three in the back and this was happening to them and, and it's so. To me it has more to do with the system and less to do with him as a, as a player. [00:21:57] Speaker C: Well, this is the first game we didn't see like a fight back mentality, so maybe Quill was kind of waiting for that. But San Diego did really well, right? We talked about this. They opened up the middle of the field and all of a sudden Nibiaga and Romero both look really old and really slow, right? And the thing, the thing that had been working defensively was that back four with the three guys across it in midfield like that tight, compact back seven, tight spaces. You know, when you had Kaike on your one side of Ramiro and you had show or whoever else dug out at one point on the other side so that, that those spaces were tight. There wasn't these huge gaps there. You know, if you have a, if you have those guys on islands and they're both super athletic and have great recovery space like irrigated Irigide at center back and then in Biogas position, he probably could have made some recovering runs there. You know, if you had a midfielder that could cover immense ground, it could chase guys down, maybe he could have solved a couple of those goals. I mean, still, it was so big that I almost don't know who you put in there that would have solved that part that much by themselves. But you know, you're going to have to go back to that compactness. You know, if you're not going to want to give up three or four goals a game every time, you know, you're going to have to tighten that back up again. That clearly doesn't work. That's spreading out. The idea of spreading out the field for Dallas was bad. Super bad. [00:23:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I, you know, the other thing is Kaik, this was the first time that that guy was out there for an extended period of time and really looked like a 19 year old guy had just got here six weeks ago. [00:23:24] Speaker C: He. He really got bypassed in a lot of ways. You know, I think he over pursued a little bit, got dragged out of position a little bit. You know, just seemed lost. You know, he may not have been like, what the hell is going on? You know. [00:23:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:36] Speaker C: Kind of mode. But that was true of the whole team. I mean there wasn't anybody on the team. I mean I made, I made Anderson Julio my man of match because I didn't have any moments where I remember like going who though? You. What are you doing? I was like, I don't. I didn't have that thought about him like I did pretty much on everybody else. But you know, he wasn't that great either. I mean he had a fair number of giveaways and wasn't really great in take ons. I mean there really wasn't any. But Shaq Moore had a pretty decent game except that he had that absolutely terrible choice later on when he. I couldn't get past it when he didn't shoot when he should have and he was wide open. And he also had, you know, multiple bad situations and turnovers too. So, you know, as even guys that were on the verge of maybe being an okay games were bad. I mean like everybody was terrible. There wasn't any. I mean Martin Paz was out of position a couple of times. I mean guys that usually are very reliable. It was like it was complete meltdown. Yeah, everybody. Everybody was bad. Even subs coming in didn't do anything. [00:24:26] Speaker A: Yeah, Dan, you didn't miss much. [00:24:29] Speaker B: Apparently not. [00:24:31] Speaker C: We should make you go watch it. Yeah. [00:24:34] Speaker A: Punishment. [00:24:35] Speaker B: No. [00:24:36] Speaker C: At least watch the highlights. It was so bad. The third, the worst part for me was that like they gave it the same goal. Three of the five goals with the same goal and the fourth one was almost exactly the same goal. And the pk. Whatever I. [00:24:48] Speaker A: That moment, where is it? Is it Lozano who cuts inside that pass into the top of the box and he essentially just screws Ibiaga into the Ground and cuts back to his inside. Was it. Was that Chucky? And then he passes it to his right. [00:25:04] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:25:06] Speaker A: By the way, the goal in the 74th minute where it comes off the crossbar. This made me feel really old, because that is the son of Simo Vallecari playing for San Diego now. [00:25:18] Speaker C: Sema was one of my favorite players that ever played for Dallas. It really annoys me that his son doesn't play for us. [00:25:24] Speaker A: I know. [00:25:25] Speaker C: I mean, I know he's a nice player, too. Yeah. I mean, I get it. You know, he's free to do this without the other. I'm like, man, I would have loved for that kid to play. It's like, jesus, David. You know, I mean, like, I love Simo so much. Just a wonderful guy, you know, I would have loved to have his kid come play here. That would have been so much fun. [00:25:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:42] Speaker C: Just emotionally fun. I mean, I. You know, who knows if they even need him? I mean, Logan Ferguson is a great player. I have no qualms about, like, in terms of that. I just, like. I was like, simo Valkyria's kid came to the league and didn't come to Dallas. I was like, oh, man. [00:25:52] Speaker A: Well, it. It was a bad night, and I felt stupid for watching the game on Saturday night and staying up late to. To watch it, but here we are. I don't know, man. It was. The funny part is, is that up until the second goal, I didn't think San Diego was playing that well. And then they got up two goals, and instead of Dallas fighting back, they just kind of, like, grabbed the game and just said, okay, we're going to ragdoll you to death for the next 60 minutes. [00:26:21] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:26:21] Speaker A: And that's what they did. And. [00:26:23] Speaker C: Yeah, and they clearly spotted a thing that was vulnerable, and they just went at it. Three straight goals. Four straight goals. It's like, hey, look at this. And I just did it again and again and again, and it worked every time. It was just crazy to me. [00:26:36] Speaker A: Do you think there was any moment Dan Hunt is watching this, going, wait, this guy was on my coaching staff? [00:26:43] Speaker C: Yeah. Oh, I bet. That's one of the great. To me, one of the great stories of the Lucci Gonzalez era to now is that Mikey Varys, to his credit now, he got treated with complete disrespect when he was here by everybody. [00:26:59] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:27:00] Speaker C: All the players, all the people around the club, it was all those. [00:27:03] Speaker A: Who is. Who is Lucci's friend? Who's this guy? [00:27:07] Speaker C: He's Luigi's buddy from Lucci's coaching class. He was brought in as a yes man to hold Lucci's hand and make Lucci feel comfortable. Well, it turns out that he was probably the brains behind. I mean, listen, I love Lucci. I think he's an amazing academy coach, but he does not look good in comparison over the long run compared to Mikey Varys, who immediately got another job as, like, the Utah 20 coach and was great. And now as a head coaching job in mls looks great. So who knew that we all were disrespecting quite unfairly Mikey Varis. He's a way better coach than anybody thought. I don't know whether he maybe should have stood up for himself a little bit, but, you know, players tuned out when he would start talking when he was here as Luigi's assistant. Players would just stop listening because they're like, he's just going to say what Lucci just said. They just didn't listen to him at all. And that's from my opinion for Stan there. I don't know what they say if you ask them, but, you know, you can watch guys roll their eyes and kind of like turn away. You know, you see it, you can't. You know, he. [00:28:02] Speaker A: It was about 90 minutes of just Rondo for San Diego. They were just running a Rondo the entire game, just passing around Dallas. And it was. I mean, you know, Dallas pressed pretty nicely and had a couple moments where they turned them over, but didn't do much with that, those opportunities. But, man, as the game really got out of hand, they just started clowning Dallas back and forth and it was kind of embarrassing. [00:28:25] Speaker C: Those rondos is a real thing. Remember, Lucci loved Ronda's. We made a shirt rondo. That was the Lucci quote, you know. Yeah, yeah. And it works when it works. [00:28:33] Speaker A: Yep. [00:28:34] Speaker C: How many times did we watch FC Dallas play under Lucci? And we talked about, like, teams were low blocking the crap out of Dallas and we were like, how do you get them out? And they just. Lucy balled the ball around for like 8, 000 passes and, like, they never could pull anybody out. Well, San Diego pulled Dallas out and shredded them apart. [00:28:49] Speaker A: Right. And that's what. And I think that's how some people figured out San Diego after their hot start is they just kind of started low Bl him a little bit. And that is going to be their problem if. If they can't get a team to do what Dallas did and get them to, you know, poke up. [00:29:04] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:29:04] Speaker A: So, well, there you go. Which is weird because Dallas does have the three games in a week situation is Wednesday night is the US Open Cup. By the way, I think today is the very first day I saw anything official out of the club mentioning the Open cup game. I got an email or saw an email or something referencing the game against AV Alta in on Wednesday night. So I don't know anything about AV Alta. I don't even know what division they play in. And all I know is what you told me, Buzz, is that their goalkeeper is a former Dallas Academy product. [00:29:41] Speaker C: Yeah, Carl Sevillas. They. They play in USL1. They are at eighth place. They're out of California, so that's the same league as Texoma. [00:29:49] Speaker A: Do you know what, where, what part of California? [00:29:52] Speaker B: The Antelope Valley. [00:29:53] Speaker C: Antelope Valley. AV Ultra is Antelope Valley. [00:29:56] Speaker A: I don't know where the Antelope Valley is. [00:29:58] Speaker C: Okay. [00:29:59] Speaker A: Is that part of. Is that in the LA area? The San Diego area? North Carolina, California? [00:30:04] Speaker B: It borders Los Angeles County. [00:30:06] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [00:30:07] Speaker B: Los Angeles itself. [00:30:08] Speaker A: All right. [00:30:09] Speaker C: Yeah. So we don't know much about this team. The weird thing is, is they play Texoma on Saturday. Oh, wow, they have a double. Yeah. No, back in California, but still crazy that Texoma who will face them. So, like, they're getting a Texas double. [00:30:29] Speaker A: They can scout them on Wednesday in person. [00:30:33] Speaker C: So yeah, come up. I'm sure they will. [00:30:35] Speaker B: I think they're a bit of an interesting one because they got Brian Koleban, the former. Do you remember there was a bit of a scandal a couple years ago about LAF, L.A. galaxy firing their academy coach after they lost a couple of players to Europe? Turned out his brother was their agent and there was a whole like, oh. [00:30:56] Speaker A: Wow, I do kind of remember that. [00:30:58] Speaker B: Yeah, like, solid coach. Did the whole Barcelona Academy thing. Interned at Barcelona, interned in Argentina. Ran the Chivas USA Academy win on Galaxy. He's the one that does all those 3, 4, 3 social media content deals. Yeah, solid, solid coach in mind. Very much a, a, a Barcelona student. You know, he wants to, he wants to play a higher line. He wants to be really aggressive on the ball. He's got that kind of 4 3, 3, 4 1, 41 sort of shape. They have only had one game this season where their possession's been under 60%, but they're not really doing a ton with it. They have the fewest shots in USL League One. Somehow they have 22 fewer than Teximer. [00:31:57] Speaker C: Even so they play Lucy ball. [00:31:58] Speaker B: They play absolute Lucy, but they're, they're pretty efficient. Their shots on target percentage is like just under 50%. But they, they've had a bit of a weird run into this. They haven't had a league game since April 19th. Their game this past weekend got postponed due to some travel difficulties with weather. In California, I think it was, or in Florida. It was Florida actually. They were supposed to play Naples. Uh, so their last two games were actually both one goal away losses to USL championship sides. So they're pretty well drilled on cup soccer at this point. [00:32:40] Speaker A: Well, what time's the game? 7. [00:32:42] Speaker C: 37 for the Cup. Game 7. [00:32:45] Speaker B: Okay, Peter, the most important part, they're not gonna wear it, but they have a really killer home shirt. A green. It's like green on green with like a Joshua tree and Antelope Valley desert depicted across the whole jersey. [00:32:59] Speaker A: I'll have to check that out. Okay, what's their away kit they'll wear here, Dino? [00:33:04] Speaker B: It's desert sand, like kind of beige. It's got like these like beige on beige pinstripes. That's all the cities around in the Antelope Valley with a green collar. I couldn't tell you what color shorts and socks they are, but you know, light versus dark. [00:33:21] Speaker A: So Buzz, what does. How do you think Eric approaches this game? [00:33:26] Speaker C: Well, this is your best chance to win something. Probably this year is the gonna be the cup. Cause it's a limited MLS field and. But the other thing is that you got to try and get your team right. So you want to rotate some, but I imagine that you would you just a little bit. But I imagine you would use pretty much whatever you think you're going to use next weekend on Saturday against rsl. So like whatever I want to do against rsl, I'm gonna do that in this game too. I'm just going to use it as like a get ready game. Except that I gotta take it seriously. I can't be looking ahead to ourselves. So like, okay, maybe we rest Lucho Acosta, you know, and that might be. And maybe we rest Irigide and that really might be about it. So you have to decide what formation you want to play going forward. Like, okay, the 343 was a disaster. Okay, so do I go back to what was working, which was, you know, the. That, that diamond four as we've been calling it, or do I really want to try and go to the. What I really want to play that. 3, 4, 2, 1. Well, it comes back again to Lucha Casa. Like, what? How am I going to do that guy? So my assumption is that he'll go back to the diamond kind of Four thing that is the, like, the thing that has worked the best this season. It's not ideal, it's not what he wants to do, but it's what has worked the best with Lucha Casa. And even though you're probably going to give Acosta this game off, maybe you'll put him on the bench, you know, you. You still want to play that way for everybody else pretty much because you want to practice it. This is like when we went to the. When they went up to Minnesota and Quill said, I gave Casa a game off, but because I want to make sure everybody else can play together without him because everyone was just kind of giving it to him over and over and over again. And that kind of still is happening. So the. Another question you have to ask yourself is Ramiro is going to be out for real Salt Lake. So do I let him play in this game or do I give him a rest and try and figure out who's going to play in his spot? And I think the answer should be figure out who's going to play in his spot. And to me, that is you take Kaike and put him in as the actual six. And then maybe you put something you've been kind of wanting to work towards anyway, right, is get him in there and let him see how it goes. And bring. But bring back a show Kafumana and a. Maybe a Delgado, since you don't have Legetta Paxton yet, right? And give yourselves a pretty serious lineup, pretty serious team. And then other than that, there are no backup outside backs. So Norris and Moore are playing. You know, you bring up a North Texas guy maybe and bring him off the bench later. But you want to get a good lead before you start bringing in the North Texas guys, because if you roll in North Texas, you're going to get beat because the USL one is better than North Texas, it's better than MLS next pro. So I would, you know, you could maybe rest. Pause. But he's a keeper. Why bother? Just play him, you know, use. Maybe use Abubakar and the other Portuguese kid, the Alvaro Augusto. See what you got in there. And if it's. If he doesn't look that sharp, then you can bring in, you know, Oz off the bench or something if you feel you like, really need to. So I only see like one or two guys getting rotated, you know, And I really think that you'll go back to that diamond and play Kaik as the single six and see how that goes. Because if it looks great, you can go use that going forward because you know you're going to have to do something this weekend with Ramiro out, you know, you know you got to face real Salt Lake without him. So who's gonna play that spot? And so you might as well try it. And I don't. I think you start Farrington because Patter Musa will be back maybe this weekend, probably this weekend. So start Farrington in this game knowing that you can have Musa on the weekend. So that's. If everyone can follow that. I think that's what. [00:37:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:37:03] Speaker A: So Salt Lake is on Saturday, by the way. I didn't. I guess I hadn't been paying too close attention. Salt Lake's actually behind Dallas in the standings. They've got a one less win. They're an 11th on 12 points and Dallas is at the bottom of the. In the playoff part of the table on 15. So they've only won two of their last five. Yeah, one of their last four. [00:37:24] Speaker C: So, yeah, I would, I would just expect, you know, in this cup game, maybe rotate two or three guys, but otherwise play what you're going to play against Salt Lake. You're not good enough to rest everybody and you need to be getting out coming off that last game. Build confidence in most of your starters in this game and what you're going to do this weekend. So I think there'll be a lot of connectivity between the two games. That's not what I would do. [00:37:47] Speaker A: Yeah. So with some of the injury situations, I noticed that Paxton Palm McCall was not on the injury list. I. But he also wasn't in the 18. So, yeah, I don't know if that was a mistake or an oversight. Is he, is he actually now not considered injured and is there a chance, if that is the case, that we'll either see him A, Wednesday night in the Open cup or B, on Saturday against Salt Lake? [00:38:12] Speaker C: He's definitely off the injured list. But as a couple people I tweeted back when they asked me about that is like there's a difference between being uninjured and being game fit and game prepped after two years without playing. So I don't think there's a rush. It's been two years. [00:38:29] Speaker A: Has it been two years? [00:38:30] Speaker C: I think it's approaching two years. [00:38:31] Speaker B: Aside from six minutes. Yeah. [00:38:33] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, he played six minutes. Right. That was the whole thing that last. So, I mean, two years is maybe a little bit of exaggeration, but it's over a year. It's between a year and two years is a long time. So the point of that is like you don't travel him out to the west coast and play him on that disaster of a surface at San Diego that was never going to be in the cards. You know, the chatter we hear is they're targeting maybe the, the Houston game, which is another two weeks from now, maybe that you would see him for the first time. There's no rush on him. I mean don't, don't, let's not panic in that sense, you know, and sometime in the next two weeks we should see Marco Faran come back. We should see Peter Musa, I think will be back against rsl. Based on what I'm hearing and talking and people are feeding me, I'm hearing rsl. I would not use him against, I would not start him again in the cup game. Bring him off the bench maybe if you want to give him 15 minutes if he's, if you feel like he's up for that. But Sebastian Legend will be back somewhere in the next couple of weeks, probably two. So you're gonna get three or four nice pieces coming off in the next two or three weeks. Part of why you don't have to do any complete panic. You want to see what if you can get some of these million dollar players back and see how it looks when you get all guys on the field and get them working again. So no rush. Don't, don't get him out there and get him hurt. Let's, you know, get through this next game or two. I mean, I know, I know this cup game's on the FC Dallas field. It's a nice field. It's gonna be fine. It's not that, it's not like that. San Diego field, which is. [00:39:54] Speaker A: Yeah, what is the deal? How could you not grow grass properly in San Diego? [00:39:59] Speaker C: It's overuse. The school stadium belongs to the university. It's where they play their football games. It's also got a women's team that plays there. It's just, it's just overuse and bad management. That's all it is. [00:40:10] Speaker B: Well, it was, I mean it was, it was disaster before San Diego FC even existed. [00:40:15] Speaker C: Yeah, I, the, the, the San Diego Wave, the WSL team had massive mass issues with that service. They got fined by the league a couple of times for it being so bad, you know, but they don't control it. It belongs to the school, so it's like it's not their, I mean they don't, they can't just throw money at it because it's belongs to the Aztecs. So they probably play not just gridiron football. They probably play their soccer games on it, too. I don't know for sure, but maybe they do. I don't know. So well. [00:40:44] Speaker A: Gross. Not everybody can have a FC Dallas ground crew, I suppose, that work their little miracles. All right, well, anything else about football club Dallas before we move on to other more important things? [00:40:59] Speaker C: I, you know, just. And just in general, we've talked about this all year, Right. This roller coaster, you know, it's going to continue. You know, it. They're going to be really big highs as you start to get guys back and get healthy, and then hopefully there won't be too many big lows. But they're going to be games where they're going to get skinned because they're still. There's still roster pieces that are wrong and don't fit with the coach wants to do. And they still have this. Even if you get everybody healthy, you still have this Acosta problem you got to solve. So just ride it and enjoy the volatility. I mean, a way I think you can enjoy the volatility possibility of it. And as long as you don't expect yourself to be an MLS cup this. [00:41:33] Speaker A: Year, it just feels like this club has been in a perpetual rebuild cycle now for nine years. [00:41:40] Speaker C: Yeah. Since Oscar left. [00:41:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:42] Speaker C: Basically since 2016. [00:41:44] Speaker A: 2017. [00:41:45] Speaker C: Probably since Clavio passed, too. [00:41:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:41:48] Speaker C: Which may say something nuts. [00:41:49] Speaker A: Nuts. All right. Dallas Trinity had a home game against Tampa. Where. Or not. Road game. Excuse me. Against Tampa, who were issued the first red card in league history, which is pretty remarkable. I didn't realize there hadn't been a red card in the entire season for any team yet. [00:42:07] Speaker C: I didn't either. Yeah. Couldn't believe it when the commentary said that. And they. They repeated it a couple of times because they were flabbergasted by it. And I think it's appropriate that Amber Brooks, the warrior, that she has got kicked in the face and that's what got the red card. And she was like, whatever, let's play. [00:42:21] Speaker A: Oh, so the. The Tampa player got her Val. Her money's worth. [00:42:23] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. I mean, it was. The ball was. The ball was up by her head. The tent player raises her leg and jumps studs first for the ball, and then here comes Amber Brooks. And it smashed, you know, cleats into the face. [00:42:36] Speaker A: Ah. [00:42:36] Speaker C: And it was a rough. It was fair. I mean, she didn't mean to do it. [00:42:40] Speaker A: I've met Amber Brooks and I suspect she's quietly kind of loved it. [00:42:44] Speaker C: Yeah. Amber Brooks is a warrior. There's no question she was in the battles, but like. And it's not like the girl tried to kick her on the face. She wasn't looking at Amber. She was looking at the ball. But still, when you kick someone and cleat first in the face, you're getting a red card. [00:42:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:58] Speaker C: There's only so much you can do. But I, you know, to not get a single red card in the whole league until this point is somewhat amazing. [00:43:06] Speaker A: How did they lose that game? And I didn't watch it, but I'm just kind of surprised to hear Dallas lost, especially with a man advance or woman advantage. [00:43:13] Speaker C: Yeah, well, the, the. They're still banged up a little bit. You know, they're. They traveled like on Friday and then the rain got. The game got canceled out on Saturday and I think they even got stuck at the airport. Somebody said they slept in the airport. I can't verify that. You know, they ended up having to be like checking out of their hotel at like 9 in the morning and then go sitting around the stadium all day so they could play this game. [00:43:35] Speaker A: This league is so unstable. I've. [00:43:37] Speaker C: Yeah, the weather cancels are happening way early, you know. [00:43:41] Speaker A: Well, it's like they're. It's like now twice Dallas has had their game postponed because of travel due to weather travel. And I don't think, I mean, you just don't hear about that ever happening. And it's happened to them twice. [00:43:55] Speaker C: Yeah, it's not the only team it's happened to. So I, they got some ducks to iron out in that vein. But you know, Dallas also played. Trinity also played a three, four, three, more style, you know, which takes a player out of the middle. So they sort of didn't have control of the middle of the park. And again, it was. It was Brooks and Abion in there trying to hold it together without a third player. No mismo for sure. But you know, Hensel's playing on one wing and Lancaster's on the other. So like instead of that 3, 5, 2, it was the 3, 4, 3. And so they lost control of the middle. And being. Even being up a man for like 75 minutes, they never really could get a hold of the game. Tampa pressed really hard all the time all over the field, and Trinity just didn't have the energy. I really think that the travel got to them and they were just worn out and just were sick of getting smashed all game long. And they, they outshot Tampa, but they did not get more shots on target. So they weren't creating really. It was just Too clogged up and they never really got clean chances. It's just sometimes this happens, you know, when you're down to man. Sometimes you just really galvanize and fight for your team. [00:45:05] Speaker A: You know, I think really the biggest surprise out of this game was the realization that we've all been mispronouncing a player's name incorrectly and that she has decided that she wants a particular syllable out of her name removed. So now it's abagu. [00:45:23] Speaker C: Yeah, I checked with PR on that and we and everybody else, including all the broadcasters, had been saying ubo gagu. And then now a month ago, apparently she decided to clarify for everybody. That's that and what they've been saying is ubagu. When I checked with PR today, they said that's not really quite right either. I think everyone is really struggling to pronounce her name. The PR guy says that the, there's a, there's a GH in the middle of there that she just says it really fast because there's a video of her pronouncing it. I know he kind of was saying it's more like a boobagoo. [00:46:04] Speaker B: Yeah, you can kind of hear it in that video that she. Yes, it's a very quick. But yes, it's purely the, the emphasis. There's no like gas. [00:46:13] Speaker C: Yeah, the God that we were putting in there was wrong, but neither is this. The straight ubugu is not right either. [00:46:19] Speaker B: But I guess for that fair. So it's more preferential. [00:46:22] Speaker C: Yeah, it's closer to the Ubo gugu than, I mean, it's a tough one, I admit. I, I, I'm, you know, I'm the old white guy here who can't get the name of the young black girl's name right. And I apologize and I wish I could do better, but everyone is getting it wrong still, apparently. So. Okay, hopefully we can all get on this right page. And I think Ubagu is probably as close as I'm going to be able to get it. I don't know. [00:46:51] Speaker A: Well, still in second place, Trinity have their next road game against DC Power, who are second to last at 6 o'clock on Saturday. And it will be on the peacock for sure. North Texas, that's the only team, I think in of all the Dallas area teams, North Texas, only one that got to win this weekend. Buzz. [00:47:11] Speaker C: Yeah, if you care about wins for North Texas. They won. They won one. One, I think over Minnesota United, who's a really good team and has been doing really good things. And then in New malls. Next pro, but Dallas has their number. Dallas, sorry, North Texas SC has their number for some reason and they, this kid named Landon Hickam scored an absolute cracker of a game of a goal and he got the, the rising talent player of the week award from MLS next pro, which you know is only one guy in the whole league. So credit to him. It was an absolutely fantastic goal and he played pretty well. He's an actual legit six. He's going to smu. So he had a pretty solid game and just all the way around like, you know, again, if you think this is important, John Gall's getting them pretty dialed in and playing a pretty tight defensive game. They're able to, you know, get a goal or two and hold on to these games and not let guys come back. Early in the year they were giving up a lot of comeback from behinds or got kings where teams were riding and scoring and beating them and they've, they're clamping down on that a fair bit. So, so if results is the name of the game, that's great. I, I wish they would be playing more of these youngsters but, you know, what can I do about that? So in the meantime, they're grinding out wins and they're climbing into the top parts of the standings. So now they're off to the 18th and the, the Academy has their MLS Flex tournament this weekend, which is a way to win your way into the playoffs at the very end of the season. So some of the kids, like six players from North Texas are going to, that are young enough to be on the Academy or going with the Academy, which is probably why they don't have a game this weekend. [00:48:44] Speaker A: Texoma. I, I was saw something on Twitter and it looked like they were in a lead and I thought, oh, they're going to win their first game. But no, they lost to Charlotte on a late PK4 3. [00:48:55] Speaker C: Yeah, they got a, they have, you know, a couple of their best players are getting some goals, but they're really struggling to keep balls down on the net. Brampadilla is definitely their most talented pure soccer player on that team. They really need to sign him up for the rest of the season. He's only got a couple of weeks left on his short term deal that he did. I hope they can keep him because he's definitely a higher caliber player than anyone else they have, but their next two or three best players got goals in this game and so they had a chance to get it and, and they didn't. [00:49:22] Speaker A: Are those games Available to watch, stream anywhere. [00:49:25] Speaker C: Yeah, ESPN plus. I watched the first half of this one until I had to bail out. But. [00:49:32] Speaker A: And that leads me into asking the question, when do the seasons for like the Vaqueros, Chupacabras, Diablos and those guys have those already started? We're just not talking about them or. [00:49:43] Speaker C: No, they start. They start at the end of this month, I believe. Okay. I don't have that schedule in front of me, but don't worry about it. [00:49:50] Speaker A: We'll worry about it when it gets closer. [00:49:52] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:49:53] Speaker A: All right. [00:49:53] Speaker C: They're in the phase of announcing all their players and they've announced. Most of those teams have announced about half of their players. You know, keep in mind that they're mostly staffed by school college kids. So when those kids are done for the end of the school year, like, which is like in the next couple of weeks. Right. Mid May, roughly. I haven't been in college in a long time, so the season will start, you know, end of May, I think they start, give or take. [00:50:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. 17th Denton. [00:50:18] Speaker C: They play like eight or 10 games over the course of like a month and a half, two months, you know, in the summer, basically. And what'll be fun to watch and we'll pay attention to, of course, is that this is the first time that FC Dallas is going to run a U23 team in one of these leagues. It's called the leagues for clubs. And so it'll be fascinating to me to watch who comes back to that team from FC Dallas Academy that's like in colleges or whatever or what they do with that team. It's brand new for the, for FC Dallas and they've never done it before. So it'll be fun to sort of scope that out and analyze that, see what's going on there. [00:50:53] Speaker B: I think, I think we may need to see what the FC Dallas schedule is like on May 24 because McKinney, Chupacabra's host, Stinton Diablos. [00:51:04] Speaker C: That'd be a fun one. Yeah, I definitely need to get to one game at McKenna, see what that deal's about there for sure. [00:51:12] Speaker A: All right, so ironically we're recording this on Monday evening. Earlier today on the station, the Kick around airs the Ticket, the afternoon show number one rated big time hoity toity radio show, the Hard Line. [00:51:28] Speaker C: What is this ticket? You speak up, Peter. I'm not aware of. [00:51:31] Speaker A: Dave Lane was doing a segment and I was shocked to learn that he was dedicating the segment to discussing what happened on Friday evening out in Garland, which was the big reveal of the USL Dallas/GARLAND team. And he wanted to discuss that because he also wanted to mention to Corby and Bob, his co hosts, that this was also coinciding likely with the announcement that the USL was doing promotion, relegation. And you know, Dave is a soccer. He's an Everton fan. But I, I didn't expect Dave to know all the nuances and the number of teams now playing in the Dallas Fort Worth area and all of the ins and outs of it. So some of it was missing there. But I. Overall, I was impressed that Dave even wanted to talk about it because it is very much something that has been on a topic for the three of us since it came out on Friday. I've had a lot more time to kind of digest it, but it has been revealed at the event on in downtown Garland on Friday will be called Atletico Dallas, which is not a surprise. I think we all kind of had heard or seen some hints of that. But I think really the overall branding and kind of the messaging that was put out through the logo and the word marks and the video are all for a very interesting conversation. And I'm su. Because Dan's kind of our design guy on the show. Dan, what are your overall thoughts and reactions now? You've had a few days to kind of marinate on Atletico Dallas. [00:53:06] Speaker B: Okay, so by the way, Dan is. [00:53:09] Speaker A: Wearing an Atletico Dallas hat with the, with the snake and wolf on it. [00:53:15] Speaker B: Okay. I guess start with the snake. Wolf. The colorized full logo for me is a bit of a miss. You know, heraldry is not something that's in North Texas or in the US As a whole. It's a little bit. [00:53:31] Speaker A: When you say heraldry, can you explain what you mean by that for people that don't know what that term means? [00:53:35] Speaker B: Yeah, so this, like, you know, coats of arms, official crests, things like that. So if you look at some state flags in the Northeast, wherever it kind of dates back to the thirteen colonies, they. They have like a heraldic symbol of like the, you know, different animals and different aspects that mean certain things, like little clamshells and whatnot. In Atletico Dallas's case, it's the Mexican gray wolf, or as people were probably more likely referred to, the, you know, New Mexico lobo and a rattlesnake. Very. Okay, so one of the first rules of branding in soccer, if you can't draw the logo, it's too complicated. And this is a logo that looks like an oil painting. There's a lot of, A lot of relief, a lot of shading, a Lot, lot of shadowing. It's, it's very, very, very complex. [00:54:34] Speaker A: It's very ornate. [00:54:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And then it's now the, I think the subjects, honestly going through the evening, I was sitting with Arman off a couple hours after the event and there's people walking around with the T shirts and both sort of said, yeah, the wolf's really growing on me. I think they've got a version that's just like, just monochrome. It's just flat. It lacks the shading, it lacks a lot of the detail. It's more, it's simplistic and it looks really cool. [00:55:01] Speaker A: Is that what's on your hat? Because I can't really tell. Is your hat kind of that version? [00:55:06] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:55:07] Speaker C: It's that without the shield part. It's just. [00:55:10] Speaker B: And I think the shield, the shape of the shield is, is a little bit of an odd one. It's kind of like a. There is a Photoshop Clipart pack that has that shield in it. I think if you're going to go ornate, you go ornate all out. You, you know, whether that's kind of a bordering or a different shape. Hopefully it's just, you know, that's going to be what they use for us around on the jersey. And mostly they're just going to kind of go with this, the, the two animals there because that's, that's a cool look. That's very individual. One thing that's a little strange for me and I know this is Peter, you mentioned it when we were talking in group me when it was kind of revealed was the lack of wording in the logo. It's rare, right? And ironically, if you look across the Premier League and La Liga, there are two teams that lack any kind of lettering in a logo. Wolves and Atletico Madrid. [00:56:08] Speaker A: Well, look, just from a simple standpoint, name me a brand new business. Hamburger shop, toy store, plumbing services, soccer team. Name it. Show me a brand new thing that introduces itself to the world and doesn't include the name of what it is in their logo. And I'm going to show you something that goes out of business very quickly. [00:56:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I know they are trying to create a long term brand. I sat down with Sam Morton. He said, you know something that outlives him and Matt Valentine and I guess you can liken it to. I think a brand is good, but how you use it is more important. I always use the example of Dallas Cowboys. To me, dog shit brand. It's just a star, it's a janky font, but they use it so well, that. You see that star, and you instantly know it is. You see that weirdly bolded bottom of a font, you know what it is. Anyone over the world, they don't know what necessarily know what the NFL is. They might have just seen a clip of little giants or something, but they know what it is, right. So that. I mean, that's their goal on us on a much smaller level. And, you know, fair play to them. It's just how they use it. [00:57:30] Speaker A: Yeah. I saw a lot of pictures from the event, and I saw a lot of shirts that, at Atletico Dallas mixed with the logo of the snake and the wolf, and that absolutely looked better. Although I also saw the word mark done in different fonts, which confused me, depending on what shirt you were looking at. [00:57:50] Speaker B: Yeah, they had this really cool hoodie that's got this. Sam told me it was a custom font they had made, but it's a very, like, Ariel Black, sort of very bold, very clear font. And it looks so good. Yeah, because the other. The other font they're using is. Is just Times New Roman with the serifs extended a little bit. It's not. It's not that interesting. I think the funny thing I found was I was looking at the USL subreddit, and there were, you know, very mixed reaction. Some people absolutely loved it. Some people hated it. Some people love the name, but not the logo. Some people hate the name, but love the logo. And there were two comments that kind of caught my eye. One was, it's not the worst branding ever, but it feels as. As if it's trying a little too hard to have the vibe of more than just a soccer club. And another one was, if this was mls, everyone here would be roasting it, and rightly so. [00:58:47] Speaker C: Buzz, we. [00:58:47] Speaker B: We talked about this at the event. They've got two years until they kick a ball. They've got time to kind of figure out. To gauge this reaction, figure out what they want to change, to kind of shape it in a way, whether it is drop the shield shape, whether it is maybe, hey, go a little less complex, have. Simplify the. The animals a little bit. Maybe have just the. The flat blue, the flat silver, the flat black, whatever you want it to be. [00:59:11] Speaker C: I had the impression from talking to them, I know for a fact that they have lots of variations of these logos. And I'm with you guys. The ornate one, I don't. I don't like the flat one. I love the color palette. I love. I really like the name. I think that's a name a traditional Soccer name that makes a lot of sense that no one is using this country really. Not on a big level. There's been some local teams but. But I got a sense from them that they had a whole bunch of different versions and. And variations and plays on this thing. And there's a big talk from them about community and in a sense of like how people react to things and how people adapt things and how people use things. And I kind of walked away with like this. And if you look at their stuff like a. Lots of the stuff has different that they have available now. It's almost every single piece has got a different version of the logo or the word marker, how it's used or how it's laid out. Like they're giving you lots of things. The video has like cup. They had up. They had the. And the guys that they had march in. They get. They had all these flags made with different versions of this that. So I kind of been walking away with this idea that from them that they're going to throw all these things out there and just see how people react, see how people use it, see how it gets what people feed off of and get excited about and then lean into those ideas, like whatever gets people motivated and fired up and gets people juiced up about this team, then we're going to go with that and grow with that. And they really are leaning hard into the East Dallas, right. North Dallas, a lot of Hispanic flavors and everything's in both languages, you know, so it's going to be. I think it's going to have an organic element. And so over the next two years, Dan, you might be right. It might evolve in some ways in terms of how they use it. [01:00:56] Speaker B: I think organic is. Is exactly something I was going to mention. So I was talking to. To Sam and you know, I just asked him, hey, you know, nickname. What. What's. You know, do you have any kind of plans with that? Because, you know, Atleti Atletico is always going to mean Atletico Madrid. It always is. Dallas is going to be FC Dallas. It might be Dallas Trinity. In the USL landscape, you kind of can't necessarily rely on everything being Atletica. Dallas Athletico Dallas. And he said, hey, look, we don't want to impose a nickname. We want it to be organic and exactly that. You know, people are going to kind of. [01:01:32] Speaker A: Lamar Hut said the same thing in 2003, by the way. [01:01:35] Speaker B: Did he really? [01:01:36] Speaker A: Yes. [01:01:37] Speaker B: I mean, I mean that's. Unfortunately, you know, they then gathered, they then gained a nickname and they decided to ruin it. And then they. They pushed another one and nobody wanted to use it. So I don't know. But to me it was. It's a. It's the way that they're looking at it is quite an old school approach. You know, Manchester United didn't call themselves Red Devil. That was. That was. French journalists and fans back in the 30s took it on and were like, oh, that's really cool. And then over time, that became the team's brand and they've got a chance to do that. Hopefully no one just goes, hey, Wolves, hey, snakes, hey Lobos, you know, or Texas Topaz or whatever. But, yeah, hopefully something cool comes out of it. [01:02:23] Speaker A: My immediate reaction was one of confusion because when I saw all the stuff on Friday before the embargo was lifted, I was immediately thrown off because I. I just fund them from a. Just a fundamental point of establishing an identity for your brand new club and putting something in your logo that makes sense to, like, why this is in your logo. I don't understand. A, why there's a wolf, and B, why there's a snake. And C, more importantly, why they're fighting against each other. Like, I don't know what that has to do with anything with Dallas culture. Garland culture, soccer culture. Like, none of that makes any sense to me. And. And then the video, I thought, was even more weird and so moody. Let me say this. The production value of the video was really, really good. I was really impressed with the production quality. But the story of the guy telling the story, the fable about the wolf and the snake that his grandfather, that didn't help explain it in any way. They never connected those things together. Like, if you just look at the FC Dallas logo, the brand, you get it. It's a longhorn. The Preston Trail runs through Frisco. They used to run cattle through there. That makes sense. A snake and a wolf fighting each other doesn't make any sense. And then they keep throwing out these weird little social media haikus that I think. Think they think explains it, but it just confuses me even more. All right, so all of that I find weird. I will say there's a weird optical illusion going because every time I look at that badge. The black with the blue or the black with the. [01:04:09] Speaker B: The silver? [01:04:10] Speaker A: The silver. Yeah. The sil. The black with the blue makes the silver look pinkish to me. Is that. Is it doing it to you guys too? [01:04:17] Speaker C: Yeah, no. Yeah, it does. Yeah, that's. But that'll. That only shows on the embossed, fancy version, on the flat version. That doesn't happen. [01:04:24] Speaker A: So when I first saw the logo, I went, the colors are pink, blue and black. And I thought, okay, that's interesting. Then it's actually silver. And I'm like, well, it doesn't look silver. So. All right, so all of that aside, let me just. So all of the practicalities of, of violating branding 101, and a long list of those things aside, because after watching the video from the event and really thinking about it and hearing some of the quotes and reading some of the quotes that you guys got from all of this, something became very clear to me, which is as I have gotten older, at the age of whatever I'm at, so many of the things, the fundamentals that I were, I was taught that were important to things being successful from creating content or establishing businesses and branding have fallen away by the wayside. Like, things that I thought were really important and mattered in things being successful aren't that way anymore. And all of this stuff that we're talking about as it relates to the soccer team, I don't think really ultimately matters because what will matter and what was really showing itself on Friday night was their ability to connect with a community and a target audience that very much wants to be a spoken to and be respected. And that is the Texan, Mexican American, Latino audience that is in East Dallas, Garland, Mesquite, all of that area over there. And that is for a 10,000 seat or 15,000 seat stadium. Man, that is a deep well of opportunity for those guys. And as long as they make that connection, whatever the colors or branding is, I don't think that audience cares. They just want to be, they want to be catered to. And I think that was the starts of it on Friday night. [01:06:06] Speaker B: And there were, there were a lot of people there that said it didn't matter what they said, it was purely how they said it and who they said it to. They. So they played that video. They played the Spanish version of the video, which is infinitely better than the, the English voiceover. It's. Yeah, it's just more. What's the same guy? Yeah, it's. It's just more moody in the right way way. It's not, I don't know, it was like an authenticity that felt more present in that than, than in the English version. [01:06:36] Speaker C: Strangely, you know, the end of the day, like, you're right, Peter, that execution is what's going to matter in terms of the product. Like, if you bring a, a product to the, to this, to. That is. That's entertaining. If you embrace the Community. If you continue with the bilingual ness, if you respect that community, if you have players that are going to, they're going to, you know, represent some of that community, you know, you're going to have, and I don't mean to go like 100%, you know, Latino and ignore the other parts of town either. It's got to be everybody, it's all inclusive. There are big chunks of Garland in Dallas that aren't Latino. You know, it's all going to be part of that and they're going to have to, you know, if you bring a quality product at whatever price point, going to be playing at the uslc, USL Premier, whatever, it's going to be in, right? If you can give people a good experience. I don't know how many times I've, I've talked to people about this team and they've said, man, it's a lot closer to me. You know, I'm going to go to that one because it's here where I live. Whether it be Garland or whether it be downtown Dallas, you know, it's like I, I was talking to somebody the other day and I said to them, you know, the Cowboys are not just Dallas, Fort Worth dominant, they're like all of Texas. All of them are huge, right? Other sports, other pro sports are dominant. Like in the whole dfw, everybody will go to the Ranger games in Arlington, everybody will go to the Mavericks games in downtown, right? But soccer's not like that. We're still community on soccer. MLS teams, 30 mile base, right? Garland's 30 minutes down the road, right? It's going to be those 2, 3, 4, 5 cities around that team in Garland. You know what I mean? South Mansfield for North Texas. If the forward team comes in, there's still these more local, more immediate. And if you attack those immediate markets and you provide, as you said, the right product and the right feeling for that community, you're going to fill up a 15,000 seat stadium. [01:08:25] Speaker B: I think one thing, I would love to mention something, I think that they've done absolutely wonderfully that Dallas Trinity did not. Dallas Trinity, I think is a little bit exclusionary with their merchandise. Everything is, there's a lot of stuff that's more expensive than FC Dallas, which doesn't make any sense to me. There's no like entry point. And then it's like, you know, you pay $50 for a gildan T shirt with, with a screen print with the merchandise for Atletico Dallas not even taking price point into it. They paid all the extra money to have like all of the custom labeling. So, Buzz, you've obviously got this hat, too that's got 1841 etched into the. The little strap on the back. If you look at the liner inside, it says Athletic Somos Dallas. It's all. It's got a little blue topaz, blue tag on the inside. The. The T shirts have, like, the custom label. So there's no, you know, there's no Gildan or jerseys or any of those kind of brands that, hey, I can go to Michael's and pick this T shirt up for $6. It's like, very, very good. The embroidery quality looks quality on some of the stuff, too. [01:09:45] Speaker A: Well, it was. It's fun. It's been fun to talk about, and it's been interesting to watch kind of play itself out. And obviously it did enough to get, you know, the number one afternoon show on Dallas Fort Worth radio to talk about it today. And so that was cool, too. So I think the really most valid thing that has been brought up is the fact that this thing doesn't launch for two years. And what we saw on Friday could look very different by the time they get around to launching this thing. And, you know, best of luck to them. We all want it to be successful, so. Well, not all. Not everybody, because I don't think, you. [01:10:21] Speaker C: Know, now we turn our attention to Fort Worth and see when that thing launches. [01:10:24] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's a whole different deal. Well, good fun. Well, I'm glad you guys got to go and had a good time. It was at least some of the scenes and some of the video and clips and stuff that I saw look like it turned out to be okay. [01:10:36] Speaker C: Everybody was asking for you. [01:10:38] Speaker A: Not a single person. Not a single person asked you where I was. [01:10:42] Speaker C: Oh, no, no. Yeah. [01:10:43] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [01:10:44] Speaker C: Like, five or six different people asked me where you were. [01:10:46] Speaker A: It was very sweet because Dan and. [01:10:47] Speaker C: I were there together. People were like, where's Peter? [01:10:50] Speaker A: The. The three amigos. Yeah, we should have showed up with our sombreros. Yeah, yeah. Fascinating. Okay. Yeah. Because I was. I was building this list back up for. To send it to Corby, Bob and Dan just so they could understand. And I was rewriting the list of all the teams in the different tiers, and it's. Man, it's like 11 teams. Although the Outlaws are going away, so we'll be back to 10 so that. [01:11:17] Speaker C: It'S not official yet, but we all think it is. [01:11:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:11:20] Speaker C: Yeah. When you include South Star, people don't know who South Star is. [01:11:24] Speaker A: I don't even have South Star. In that list. [01:11:26] Speaker C: Oh, you don't know. Okay. [01:11:27] Speaker A: No. Which one is South Star? [01:11:29] Speaker C: South star is the WPSL Women's Pro League. That's the. That's Division 3 Women's, you know. Crap. [01:11:37] Speaker A: Where do they play? [01:11:38] Speaker B: They'll be Division 2 eventually. [01:11:40] Speaker C: Yeah. Right now in America, there's no Division 2 in the women's game. [01:11:43] Speaker A: Right. [01:11:44] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:11:44] Speaker A: Where does South Star play? [01:11:47] Speaker C: I don't know. This is the team that Quills based. [01:11:50] Speaker B: Out of Fort Worth. [01:11:52] Speaker C: They've moved a couple of times, but, you know, I think they're. If people aren't familiar, there's no Women's Division 2 right now. USL Super League, which is trinity, is Division 1. And NWSL, which there's not a team here in Dallas, is Division 1, and then Division 3 is WPSL Pro, which is, you know, teams that are probably similar to NPSL or USL2. They're semi pro teams. So eventually there's going to be a Division 2 women's. [01:12:21] Speaker A: Yeah. NWSL said they're launching an. [01:12:23] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. And I think. I think that wpsl, I think, is going up. I think at some point, or USL is coming down anyway. There'll be Division 2 leagues eventually. [01:12:32] Speaker A: Okay. [01:12:33] Speaker C: And they're not yet. [01:12:34] Speaker B: WPSL Pro will be the Division 2 league. League WPSL itself. [01:12:38] Speaker C: That's probably why I put them on the list was because they're gonna eventually be this Division 2 team. [01:12:43] Speaker A: So confusing. Absolutely. [01:12:44] Speaker C: Yeah. There's a lot. I mean, that's what I mean about the community ness of these teams. You know, it's like. [01:12:48] Speaker A: Did you get me a hat for the. [01:12:51] Speaker C: I barely got myself a hat. [01:12:52] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [01:12:53] Speaker C: We'll get you one eventually. [01:12:54] Speaker A: I'll get my own hat. [01:12:55] Speaker C: Don't worry. [01:12:56] Speaker A: I don't even wear hats. I just. [01:12:57] Speaker C: I don't either. [01:12:59] Speaker B: Dan does, though, sometimes. [01:13:01] Speaker A: You look good in a hat, Dan. I gotta say, that's a. That's a snazzy hat. [01:13:05] Speaker B: So good one. [01:13:06] Speaker A: Although I, you know, it dawned on me tonight after thinking about the hardline stuff. This is only a joke. Some people are going to get. It dawned on me for the first time after four days of staring at it. The Atletico Dallas crest should have been the crest for the old hardline 2.0 back when Corby and Mike Reiner were the two hosts of the show. Because Mike Reiner was the old great wolf and Corby's noticed the snake and that would have been the perfect crest crest for that show. [01:13:32] Speaker C: Well, the owners are pretty old school. Dallas dfw maybe they did it on purpose. [01:13:36] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe. [01:13:36] Speaker B: Or it could be the new Game of Thrones spin off. [01:13:40] Speaker A: It could be the new games of throws. Yeah. I life will be complete if somehow some way they connect and tell the story of the snake and the wolf and why that relates to all this. I'm just hoping there's a payoff someday. That's what I'm hoping for. [01:13:59] Speaker B: I mean, you know, it's that kind of reverse engineered symbolism. Right. Telling a story. You know. I know like they're talking about the wolves represent friendliness and community and, and the snake represents like fast attack on the field. Which. That, that's cool. It does. That doesn't need like a convoluted story about, you know, my ancestor told me this, that and the other. It just needs to be, you know, this is what it represents. Going back to Man United, you know the, the French people start calling Man United Red Devils because they played in red and were very dominant. They terrorized teams. That's cool. That doesn't need a story. [01:14:42] Speaker A: Well, right now the logo just looks like my two corgis going after each other when one tries to butt into the other ones. Dog full dog food bowl. [01:14:51] Speaker C: Two corgis would be a great logo. [01:14:53] Speaker A: God, that would be so awesome. Snarling at each other. [01:14:56] Speaker B: Wiggle Butt FC. [01:15:02] Speaker A: Done. There you go. [01:15:04] Speaker B: Sorry SC, we've got too many FCs for sure. [01:15:07] Speaker C: Okay. I keep wanting to call San Diego. San Diego sc. I kept wanting to talk about trash logos. [01:15:14] Speaker A: All right, Wednesday night up at the Toyota Stadium Open cup game. What's the over and under in attendance buzz? 500. [01:15:22] Speaker C: Oh no. They've done a little bit better the last couple of years. But you know the reason they don't promo that stuff is because it's a stinker monetarily. But it won't be over 5,000. I'm going to say like 2500. [01:15:33] Speaker B: Yeah, it's normally like 2000. [01:15:34] Speaker C: Right? Yeah. [01:15:36] Speaker B: I wish I'd go back to the, the university tour. That was so much fun. [01:15:39] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, you know they, they, they used to use it as a vehicle to get around town and get to other segments of this population of DW. [01:15:46] Speaker A: But was it 97? They played an open cup game in Duncanville High School. [01:15:52] Speaker C: Old, Old Panther Stadium was the, that's the game against Seattle sounders Select Division 4 when Billy Sleath of all people single handedly kicked the snot out of the burn and, and got himself an MLS contract out of it. [01:16:05] Speaker A: That's right. [01:16:06] Speaker C: You remember he kicked the tar out of Chad Deering in that game, if you remember, not literally kicked him, just dominated that game. It was bizarre. I've never seen anything like it. Division 14 because Dallas didn't really rotate very heavily that game. There's a bunch of starters. Oscar and Chad were out there. They got run over by that team. It's crazy. [01:16:23] Speaker A: All right, boys. Well, this was a good chat. [01:16:25] Speaker B: Yeah, it was a chat. [01:16:27] Speaker A: I like talking soccer branding way more than talking about FC Dallas losing five nothing, man. [01:16:34] Speaker C: Anything. So I better talk about that game. That game was. Dad, you got to watch it. I think it's important that you go. [01:16:39] Speaker B: I don't wanna. [01:16:40] Speaker C: I think you really need to. [01:16:41] Speaker B: I, I, I checked my phone at 90 minutes, I saw the scores. Like, I have no intention of ever seeing this. I'm just not bad. On Saturday, two teams that I follow very closely lost, conceded five goals each and one of them no longer plays in, in a league. [01:16:57] Speaker A: Sorry, Dan, I meant to mention poor Luton. Double. Double relegation. [01:17:02] Speaker B: Spolik sp. So bollocks. [01:17:06] Speaker A: But your fate. You've got to be one of the favorites to get promoted next year. [01:17:10] Speaker B: Oh, like this year, you mean? [01:17:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:17:14] Speaker C: Dan, Are you guys gonna do fifth division all the way to Premier League, all the way back to fifth division? Is that what's in the cards? [01:17:21] Speaker B: You know, maybe if the owners stop doing a Jerry Jones. That won't happen. If they keep doing a Jerry Jones, then yes. [01:17:29] Speaker A: Have they started the new stadium yet? [01:17:31] Speaker B: There is. So you know how the answer. [01:17:35] Speaker A: Clearly the answer is no. [01:17:36] Speaker B: That's all I, it's, it's yes and no. You know how the machinery got moved into Toyota Stadium and nothing really happened for two weeks because they had that pre construction. [01:17:44] Speaker A: Right. [01:17:45] Speaker B: Legal. [01:17:46] Speaker A: Right. [01:17:46] Speaker B: That's happening right now. [01:17:48] Speaker A: Okay. All right, Very good. Well, Dan, good to see you. You do look good in a hat. And thanks for being here. Thanks for having me and Buzz. [01:17:58] Speaker C: Yeah, man. [01:17:59] Speaker A: You and I were the ones that got punished by having, by watching that game. [01:18:03] Speaker C: That was rough. [01:18:04] Speaker A: Maybe, maybe we'll get lucky and we'll be rewarded by watching two wins this week. [01:18:10] Speaker C: We very well could. Yeah. [01:18:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:18:12] Speaker C: They should be. Two, two, two home games. You got to win both of them. [01:18:15] Speaker A: That's right. [01:18:16] Speaker C: By the way, did we, should we tag on who nailed the over, under for points on the three games? [01:18:20] Speaker A: Okay. You, you, you, you nailed it. You did the four point. The over and under for the three game, the three road games was four points. You took the push, Dan took the under and I took the over. [01:18:32] Speaker C: Yep. Nailed it. [01:18:34] Speaker A: I forgot about that. [01:18:36] Speaker C: All right. [01:18:37] Speaker A: All right. Well, listen, fans, it should get better. As Jason Christ Superstar says, chin up, lads. [01:18:43] Speaker C: Chin up. [01:18:44] Speaker A: Maybe we'll get them next time. Well, thank you, boys. Good times. All right. [01:18:49] Speaker C: Third Degree, the podcast is brought to you by listeners like you. If you enjoyed any of our coverage of FC Dallas over the years on this podcast or on the website, why not give us a little [email protected] third degree? But now, as the market's expanding and all these new soccer teams are coming in, we're expanding our coverage, trying to give them, all of them, the due justice they deserve. Come on in and join us. Join us on the Discord. Join us on Patreon. Join us@third degree.net and I 30 read the podcast for all the soccer coverage in the Metroplex. [01:19:17] Speaker A: And thank you, FC Dallas or excuse me and thank you, DFW Soccer Lovin and interested type sorts of people. [01:19:27] Speaker C: So smooth. [01:19:27] Speaker A: Something like that. [01:19:29] Speaker C: So professional. [01:19:31] Speaker A: I'm workshopping it. Give me a break. And I'm workshopping it. [01:19:34] Speaker C: Yeah, that was a five zero. [01:19:37] Speaker A: We'll speak to you next week on another episode of Third Degree, the podcast. It's curious. Third Degree the Third Degree podcast. Third Degree the Third Degree n podcast. Third Degree the Third Degree N podcast. Third Degree the Third Degreen podcast.